


Workaround

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2015 [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: wishlist_fic, Cooking, Cracky, Cruelty against Meatballs, Disaster Chef Tony, Humor, If Steve is an Outsider, POV Outsider, Prompt Fic, Sarcasm, Snark, cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:58:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5390081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tony cooks, Steve watches, JARVIS is... erm, helpful, and Buffy is the other woman. Or something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Workaround

**Author's Note:**

> For _polgara_ , who asked for Buffy, Tony and JARVIS, "Really, things were going a lot smoother before you showed up." You know, I think this is the first time I actually managed to put a prompt quote directly into the story. Did I manage that? Huh. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, because I had a blast writing it.

+

Tony is cooking. 

Which, alright, this has actually happened before. 

Tony cooks sometimes.

Breakfast foods. 

Omelets, eggs, pancakes, occasionally waffles. Tony is the Master of Breakfast Foods, according to Clint, who thinks pancakes are one of the major food groups.

Tony is not cooking breakfast foods. 

Tony is, in fact, attempting to make pasta with meatballs. 

Steve suspects alien abduction and/or brainwashing. It sounds insensitive when you think of Bucky, but Steve has been watching this for thirty minutes and he is starting to become really, really worried. 

The conversation happening in front of the stove isn’t helping. 

“I’m entirely sure the meatballs are supposed to be prepared in a separate pan, sir,” JARVIS remarks, just as a flustered Tony, sweat beading on his forehead, distractedly starts dumping them in the water he put on for the noodles. 

“What? No!”

“I’m afraid so.”

“No way. One pot, I remember that much.”

“I am afraid you are mistaken, sir. Also, please regulate the water temperature, it is boiling too hotly.”

Judging by the fact that the pot is boiling over, yes, that. Steve’s hands are twitching to interfere, but the one and only time he tried, Tony a) threatened dismemberment and b) almost sicced the microwave on him. That might have been a joke, but Tony has been on a few late-night engineering bouts on the general floor lately, so it might not have been. 

Tony curses, drops the meatballs he was holding in both hands onto the countertop, making Steve cringe, and then uses his meat-stained fingers to regulate the stove. Somehow, Steve doesn’t foresee Tony cleaning up after himself. 

As soon as the water stops bubbling all over the place, the mad engineer goes back to his previous attempt at tossing the meatballs in.

JARVIS tries to stop him again.

“What do you know about cooking! You’ve never cooked. Where are you taking these ridiculous instructions from, huh?!”

Completely deadpan, JARVIS announces, “The internet. It may come as a shock to you, but there are several million pages dedicated to cooking, a percentage of which deal with how to prepare meatballs. Water does not feature in a single one.”

For a moment, Tony deflates. Then he puffs himself back up, drops the meatballs on the counter _again_ , wipes his hands on his pants and then runs them through his hair. 

Shudder. 

Steve bites his lip hard enough to draw blood before it heals almost instantly. Attack of the microwave, he reminds himself.

“I should never have installed sarcasm in you, buddy.”

“As you say, sir.”

“You’re dishonoring me! You’re probably trolling sub-par cooking websites! Sites that know nothing of Jarvis’ meatball pasta!”

Oh. Oh. 

“Of course,” JARVIS parries, refusing to acknowledge the confession Tony has just made. Steve wouldn’t have. But then, there’s a reason Steve and Tony fight more than they talk.

“Damn right!”

“Shall I throw myself on my sword now, or wait until this debacle is finished?”

Tony opens his mouth, visibly flounders, closes it and hisses, “Just download me one of those recipes onto the screen, you traitor.”

“Already done. You’ll find the proper starting point highlighted.”

Maybe, Steve considers, he should be filming this. Natasha showed him the camera app on his phone last week. 

Tony reads the instructions, humming quietly to himself. At this point, Steve is sure he’s been completely forgotten.

Tony gets out a pan. Tony greases the pan, using far, far too much oil. 

Tony turns the heat up to maximum and waits until the grease is firing in every direction at once, before dropping the meatballs in from three feet above the pan.

He now has meatpancakes. 

The water is still boiling happily in its pot, portions of it evaporated into the ether. The humidity in the kitchen is rising. 

JARVIS keeps making snide remarks every time Tony deviates so much as an inch from the recipe. 

Steve really wants to leave, but he kind of… can’t. This is probably what Clint calls the Car Crash Phenomenon. 

Suddenly, the elevator chimes and Tony _freezes_. With an expression usually reserved for the moment in a horror movie when the heroine turns to find the monster right behind her, he looks at the clock mounted above the doorway. 

“Oh crap.”

Steve… okay, let’s be honest, Steve came up here an hour ago to make himself a sandwich after ruining another set of workout equipment with Bucky, found Tony trying to form perfectly geometrical meatballs and stuck around out of fear for the structural integrity of their home. At this point, he has no idea what he’s expecting anymore. 

But a short blonde woman in a fashionable floral print dress, high heels and a leather coat is not it. She looks about his age, a little under thirty, and she seems perfectly sure of herself as she aims straight for the kitchen. 

She shoots Steve a friendly smile and then gets hauled in for a truly spectacular hug from Tony. He lifts her and everything and she hugs back just as tightly, laughing loudly and kissing his cheek. “Tony! I’m early, hope you don’t mind.” 

As a quasi-apology, she plonks a bottle of wine on the counter. 

Tony doesn’t even look at it, just waves her off. “It’s all fine, babe. Food’s not ready, though.”

Babe?

“You’re cooking? Also, who’s your friend?”

Tony opens his mouth, looks around, spots Steve and blushes. Just a little. Steve should definitely have filmed this. Even if he’s wondering if he needs to break Tony’s kneecaps for cheating on Pepper?

“Oh, that. That’s Steve. Rogers. AKA the Capsicle. Captain America at your service, blah blah.” He rolls his eyes. 

The woman elbows him, takes a few steps over and holds out her hand. “Hi,” she greets, not at all acting like the Other Woman type person. Steve thinks. Not like he has much experience with adultery in the twenty-first century. Or any other century. “I’m Buffy Summers, I’m with the ICW and also Tony’s one and only childhood friend.”

That’s… a relief actually. Also, ICW? Weren’t they official allies of the old SHIELD? Steve remembers reading something about them taking in a few former SHIELD agents. Don’t they deal mostly with supernatural events? And childhood friends? Really?

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Summers. You, ah, seem younger than Tony?”

She grins as they finish shaking hands, shrugs. “It’s just Buffy, and yeah. But my dad used to schmooze SI a lot and dragged me along to show me off. Somehow, Tony and I ended up escaping on the same balcony when I was, like fourteen. It worked out.”

“What she isn’t mentioning,” Tony announces, hooking a chin over her shoulder and completely ignoring the meatballs starting to char on the stove, “is that I’d just taken over from Obi a few years ago, hated these parties and was shit-faced drunk. She actually found me tipped over the flower pot I’d just puked into and kicked me in the ribs to check if I was still alive, ranting about her stupid society father all the while. We bonded.”

Steve isn’t sure early twenties qualifies as ‘childhood’, even with a manchild like Tony, or how appropriate is is for a grown man to be friends with a fourteen-year-old girl, but it’s not really his place and also, arguing with Tony about things like these only leads to headaches. 

“I am sure you were a joy to be around, sir,” JARVIS pipes up, dry as the desert.

“Oh, hi JARVIS. Has Tony been behaving himself?”

“Define ‘behave’, Miss Summers.”

“That much of a mess, huh?”

“Hey! Stop helping him bully me!”

Buffy laughs, rolls her eyes, smacks Tony on the forehead to get him off her, shrugs and then asks, “What’s that smell?”

Tony’s eyes widen as he spins back toward the food, hastily turning off the stove and lifting the pan up high to get it away from the heat. He tips it as he goes, causing several meatpancakes, now charcoaled a nice, deep black, to fall out and hit the ground with loud splats. At the same moment, the water decides to boil over again, despite the lower heat, hissing as it splatters everywhere. 

Tony yanks the pot off the stove, too, and onto a dish towel lying innocently on the counter. It starts smoking immediately and Buffy lunges, pulling it to safety in time to keep it from catching fire, tipping over the pot. Luckily, most of the hot water lands in the sink, but a good portion still spills over the counter and down the cabinets to puddle on the floor. 

All of them stare, frozen, at the mess. 

The dishtowel in Buffy’s hand still smokes and the pan in Tony’s grip stinks to high heaven. 

“This,” Buffy offers, slowly, as if in awe, “is worse than that one time I tried to make a Thanksgiving Dinner and Native American warrior spirits kept fucking everything up.”

“Shut up,” Tony snaps, reflexively. Then he sniffs, indignant. “This is all your fault.”

“How so, great master of charcoal?”

“You distracted me.”

“With what? My mere existence? Tony, it’s been almost twenty years. You should be used to me by now.”

“You,” Tony flaps his hands. “Stuff!”

“And things?”

“Yes!”

“Sir?” JARVIS pipes up, “Would you like me to tell the fire department that there is no need for concern?”

“You, what? Yes!! We’re fine! Call them off! Why are they even on alert!?”

Personally, Steve is just grateful that JARVIS stopped the sprinklers before they activated.

Helpfully, Buffy points toward the smoke detector in the ceiling. “Maybe that?”

“Who puts a smoke detector in the kitchen anyway?! JARV, who ordered this?”

“You did, sir.”

“And really,” Buffy tags on, “why would you need one, right next to a fire source?”

“This isn’t the dark ages, Buff! We do not cook with fire anymore!”

With a look into the pan Tony is still wielding, she sneers, “Could have fooled me.”

“You know,” the engineer declares, “this was really going a lot smoother before you showed up. You screwed up my zen!”

“You don’t have zen! You have a credit card without a limit. Not the same thing.”

“Of course it is!”

Buffy sighs, rolls her eyes _hard_ and throws the singed dishtowel at Tony. It lands on his face.

While he’s busy pawing it off without dropping any more charcoal-meatpancakes, she unbuckles her heels and puts them on the counter, safe from the spreading puddle. Then she twists her hair into two strands, knots them at her nape and grabs back the towel to start mopping up the floor. 

“Seriously,” she mutters as she crouches down, “we talked about this. You, me, kitchen, big no-no. Dawn actually made a plaque in our apartment that says _Buffy and Tony Not Allowed_. It hangs right above the door. Whenever I do more than grab something from the fridge, she or Andrew pop up from somewhere, brandishing a fire extinguisher. It’s hilarious. This,” she points at where one charred meatball on the floor is slowly dissolving into the hot water, “is not hilarious.”

Tony, who has finally put down the pan, mimes kicking her behind her back. “I just wanted to do something nice for you.” He’s pouting. Good Lord, he’s pouting. 

Buffy holds up to soggy, meat-stained, singed towel. “This is not nice!”

He sticks his tongue out. 

She flips him off and they just keep sniping at each other like that without pause.

Steve starts slowly edging out of the room. He can get his sandwiches elsewhere and really, Bucky is probably waiting for him. He’s been up here far too long. Besides, he’s afraid those two might be contagious. 

The last thing he hears before the elevator doors close, is JARVIS smoothly offering, “Shall I place your usual Chinese order, then?”

+


End file.
